Windfall makes eServ happy as Larry

eServGlobal
chief executive
Richard Mathews
is sitting on a $114 million cash war chest thanks to Oracle boss
Larry Ellison
, but that doesn’t mean he’s in a hurry to spend it.

It’s been less than three months since he secured an eye-popping deal that jettisoned one of eServ’s most challenged divisions for $30 million more than the company’s then $84 million total market capitalisation. But Mr Mathews said yesterday that he was yet to find anything compelling enough to buy into as the company weighs up its options.

“There are no companies that we can see at this time that would add value to the product set," Mr Mathews said.

It’s a nice problem to have for the shareholders of the company that now has a market cap of $113 million after its lucrative exit from the shrinking mobile phone billing software market.

These days eServ is focused on the fast growing trend of using mobile phone credit as a payment channel to send cash across international borders. The move has put the company in direct competition with wire transfer agencies like Western Union.

While such phone-based remittance services have taken more than a decade to evolve and are yet to become mainstream in more developed economies, eServ is betting on potentially huge markets in Asia and Africa that financial analysts have dubbed “the great unbanked".

Investors in eServ may not have to wait quite as long to bank a return on eServ’s lucrative asset disposal.

Mr Mathews said yesterday he expected a review of options on how to put the proceeds of the Oracle sale to work to be completed by the end of August.